Showing papers in "International Studies Quarterly in 2017"

Mapping the Boundaries of Elite Cues: How Elites Shape Mass Opinion across International Issues

Abstract: Despite intense interest in the nature and malleability of public opinion about foreign policy, there remains debate over when and how elite messages shape mass opinion on international issues, especially whether the informational or partisan components of elite cues dominate. The rise of survey experiments has offered conflicting insights. We argue that the single-issue nature of most survey experiments masks systematic variation in elite cue effects across international issues, and that these effects depend on the baseline distribution of mass opinion on the issues themselves. Two characteristics of underlying opinion are crucial: the share of those not aligned with expert opinion, and the degree of partisan polarization. Where polarization is limited, information effects should dominate, but where issues are polarized, information intake should be limited by partisan attribution. We test these hypotheses using nine survey experiments across a range of issues, including the rise of China, climate change, international institutions, and the use of force. At one extreme, all messages, even those endorsed by generic or opposition experts, can shift opinion; at the other, only partisan-attributed messages matter. The findings are important not only for understanding public opinion about international issues, but also for mobilizing opinion in a democratic setting. Mapping the Boundaries of Elite Cues: How Elites Shape Mass Opinion Across International Issues International relations scholarship has taken to heart the idea that domestic politics shapes how states make foreign policy choices across a wide range of issues. As part of the debate about exactly how domestic politics matters, scholars have focused extensively on public opinion, not only in terms of the nature of public attitudes themselves, but also the extent to which these attitudes are malleable. Thanks in part to the rise of the survey experiment, there has been a surge of research on the determinants of public attitudes about international issues, including trade (e.g., Herrmann, Tetlock, and Diascro 2001; Hiscox 2006), security (e.g., Berinsky 2009; Tomz and Weeks 2013; Kreps 2014), and transnational issues such as climate change and international organizations (Bechtel and Scheve 2013; Tingley and Tomz 2014). The degree to which different messages and messengers can shift opinion is an important concern for policymakers seeking to mobilize domestic coalitions around a policy, particularly on international issues which are by nature distant from most voters’ everyday concerns and thus especially ripe for cue-giving by elite actors. Yet as more and more evidence from survey experiments accumulates, an important concern is that survey experiments usually proceed issue-by-issue and are rarely attentive to variation in issue context. Some of this variation may be idiosyncratic, but there may also be systematic variation across issues at a given time. For example, some issues like climate change may be more politically polarized at the time of a survey, while others may simply have received less attention. Variation across issue context is potentially crucial for understanding the impact of elite cues on public attitudes. Despite wide agreement that elite cues matter (see, for example, Herrmann, Tetlock, and Diascro 2001; Hiscox 2006; Berinsky 2009; Trager and Vavreck 2011; Levendusky and Horowitz 2012), there remains debate about how messages and messengers shift mass opinion. In one view, cues can convey, distill, and contextualize information about policies or events for the benefit of the voter (e.g., Gilens 2001; Hiscox 2006). From another perspective, however, voters use the identity of cue-givers—most commonly, their partisanship—as a shortcut (e.g., Zaller 1992; Berinsky 2009). While IR scholarship has tended to emphasize the role of information, recent research has brought partisanship to the fore, particularly in a security context (see Berinsky 2009; Trager and Vavreck 2011; Levendusky and Horowitz 2012). Each view finds support in specific issue areas even as other issues have been

Consensus, dissensus, and economic ideas: Economic crisis and the rise and fall of Keynesianism

Abstract: During the recent economic crisis, Keynesian ideas about fiscal stimulus briefly seemed to form the basis of a new expert consensus about how to deal with demand shocks. However, this apparent consensus soon collapsed into a continuing dissensus, with important consequences for policy. Neither conventional bargaining accounts nor existing theories of the role of ideas in policy outcomes easily explain the arc of international responses to the Great Recession. In this article, we propose that sociological arguments about professions, in conjunction with those about spaces of political contention as ecologies, provide a better understanding of the puzzle of Keynesianism's rise and decline. The internal dynamics of prestige and status within the profession of economics intersected with policy arguments between states so as to make macroeconomic policy a "hinge" issue, over which coalitions in both ecologies contended. This explains how Keynesian economists and political actors worked together in the first phase of the crisis to advocate for and implement fiscal stimulus. It also explains why aggrieved policy actors, who did not favor stimulus, could help disrupt the apparent consensus in the second phase of the crisis by promoting the views of dissident economists.

Islamophobia and Media Portrayals of Muslim Women: A Computational Text Analysis of US News Coverage

Abstract: Rochelle Terman ‡ Post-­‐‐Doctoral Fellow, Center for International Security & Cooperation Stanford University Pre-­‐‐proof draft Forthcoming in International Studies Quarterly Accepted: 11 Feb 2017 Replication Materials: https://github.com/rochelleterman/worlds-­‐‐women Abstract This article draws on the theory of gendered orientalism to examine portrayals of Mus-­‐‐ lim women in U.S. news media. I test two hypotheses concerning the quantity and sub-­‐‐ stance of coverage. First, US news coverage of women abroad is driven by confirmation bias, whereby journalists are more likely to report on women living in Muslim and Middle Eastern countries if their rights are violated, but will report on women in other societies when their rights are respected. Second, stories about Muslim women empha-­‐‐ size the theme of women’s rights violations and gender inequality, even for countries with relatively good records of women’s rights. Stories about non-­‐‐Muslim women, on the other hand, emphasize other topics. I test these hypotheses against new data from 35 years of New York Times and Washington Post reporting using novel computational methods. The results suggest that U.S. news media propagate the perception that Mus-­‐‐ lims are distinctly sexist, which in turn may shape public attitudes towards Muslims as well as policies that involve Muslims at home and abroad.

De Facto States: Survival and Disappearance (1945–2011)

Abstract: De facto states—polities, such as Abkhazia (Georgia) or the Donetsk People’s Republic (Ukraine), that appropriate many trappings of statehood without securing the status of full states—have been a constant presence in the postwar international order. Some de facto states, such as Northern Cyprus, survive for a long period of time. Others, including Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, are forcefully reintegrated into their parent states. Still others, such as Aceh in Indonesia, disappear as a result of peacemaking. A few, such as Eritrea, successfully transition to full statehood. What explains these very different outcomes? I argue that four factors account for much of this variation: the extent of military assistance that separatists receive from outside actors, the governance activities conducted by separatist insurgents, the fragmentation of the rebel movement, and the influence of government veto players. My analysis relies on an original dataset that includes all breakaway enclaves from 1945 to 2011. The findings enhance our understanding of separatist institutional outcomes, rebel governance, and the conditions that sustain nonstate territorial actors.

The Politics of Diplomacy: How the United States Builds Multilateral Military Coalitions

Abstract: How does the United States build multilateral military coalitions? Conventional wisdom focuses on the role of formal alliance structures. Allies band together because they share threat perceptions, political ideology, norms, and values. I argue instead that US-led coalition-building efforts are influenced by the entirety of bilateral and multilateral ties that connects the United States with a third party. The breadth of institutions matters because it allows officials to gather information on the potential coalition partner’s deployment preferences beyond straightforward security considerations—such as what kind of economic and political considerations affect its willingness to join the coalition. Diplomatic embeddedness also helps American officials identify linkages between military and non-military interests. This facilitates the construction of side-payments. I find evidence for my argument by using an original dataset including all US-led multilateral coalitions in the pre– and post–Cold War era. I complement the quantitative analysis with a case study on US coalition-building efforts for the Korean War.

Synthetic Experiences: How Popular Culture Matters for Images of International Relations

Abstract: Many researchers assert that popular culture warrants greater attention from international relations scholars. Yet work regarding the effects of popular culture on international relations has so far had a marginal impact. We believe that this gap leads mainstream scholars both to exaggerate the   

Recasting Statecraft: International Relations and Strategies of Peaceful Change

Abstract: Much of mainstream International Relations (IR) scholarship considers war to be a precondition for significant changes at the systemic level. Peaceful change as a subject has received limited attention in Realism, except by E. H. Carr and Robert Gilpin, although several strategies for stability are present in the paradigm. Mechanisms inherent in Liberalism have offered the most insights on obtaining change without war. Constructivism also focuses on change, caused largely by norms and inter-subjective ideational forces. Yet concrete strategies for peaceful change at the international level remain elusive in much of IR theory. The traditional grand strategy literature has focused most attention on obtaining national objectives through war while ignoring peaceful mechanisms of change and transformation. This article, based on my presidential address at the 57 ISA Convention in Atlanta in March 2016, calls for a reorientation in the grand strategy literature by incorporating strategies of peaceful change. It examines the contributions for peaceful change made by Europe, the United States, and rising and resurgent powers Russia, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa, in addition to ASEAN as a regional grouping. The article concludes by asking why some of these countries pursued peaceful strategies of change at various points in time only to abandon them subsequently. The article calls on the IR discipline to think more clearly about strategies for peaceful change and foreign policymakers to adapt and reorient succeeding generations to seek change without violence as a subject matter of serious study.

The Continent or the “Grand Large”? Strategic Culture and Operational Burden-Sharing in NATO

Abstract: Policy discussions on transatlantic security frequently focus on the topic of burden sharing, highlighting the imbalance between U.S. and European military expenditures. Alliance scholarship in the fields of international security and political economy offers plausible explanations for this imbalance, based on the perspectives of balance of threat, institutional adaptation, security communities, and collective action. We argue that the more states articulate their national security strategy in Atlanticist terms, the more likely they are to allocate resources to military operations. We find evidence for this argument by using a content analysis of 95 national security strategy documents of NATO allies, and assessing the correlation between Atlanticist language in states’ strategy documents and those states’ allocation of financial resources to military operations, as opposed to personnel, infrastructure, or equipment expenditures.

Sanctions and Signals: How International Sanction Threats Trigger Domestic Protest in Targeted Regimes

Abstract: Western powers often turn to international sanctions in order to exert pressure on incumbent governments and signal their support for the opposition. Yet whether, and through what mechanisms, sanctions trigger protest remains unclear. We argue that sanction threats work as an international stamp of approval for would-be protesters; they encourage collective action against governments. Moreover, sanction threats send particularly clear and coherent signals if multiple senders issue them and if they focus on human rights, which makes such sanctions threats more effective in sparking social unrest. Using count models of protest activity, we find strong support for our arguments. We corroborate our findings with qualitative evidence from the case of Zimbabwe.

Aiming at the Wrong Targets: The Domestic Consequences of International Efforts to Build Institutions

Abstract: We explain why international development organizations have had so little success building and reforming public sector institutions in developing countries. They often fail despite their apparently strong commitment to achieving measurable results and extraordinary amounts of time, money, and effort. We demonstrate that, when donors and lenders make access to financing contingent upon achievement of performance targets, recipient countries tend to choose easy and shallow institutional targets. These targets measure the organization of public sector institutions, rather than their effectiveness at addressing public problems. Such targets provide countries with low-cost opportunities to signal commitment to institution-building to international development organizations. We demonstrate the explanatory and predictive power of our argument in the context of a sector of World Bank lending — environment and natural resource management — that focuses heavily on improving public sector institutions.

Lost in Translation: Social Identity Theory and the Study of Status in World Politics

Abstract: Chinese and Russian foreign policy, in part, reflects both countries’ ambitions for higher status in the international system. This implies a critical question: can accommodating these ambitions prevent, or even reverse, the turn toward geopolitically competitive grand strategies by Moscow and Beijing? In other words, might accommodation lead them to channel their efforts in more benign directions? The dominant framework for analyzing the ways in which states seek status—a framework rooted in the insights of Social Identity Theory (SIT)—suggests that the answer is yes: status-seekers will most likely turn toward geopolitically competitive strategies when they face apparently “impermeable” obstacles to their ambitions. I argue that this framework depends on a “mistranslation” of SIT. Properly translated, the theory tells us little about the consequences of persistent status denial for international politics. Instead, it implies that status-seeking will resolve into geopolitical competition when, first, participants view geopolitically significant resources as markers of status and, second, when leaders believe that they can successfully change the distribution of status. I use analyses of two prominent cases that should prove friendly ground for the conventional translation of SIT—Germany before World War I and Imperial Japan—to demonstrate the serious problems that plague the framework favored by international relations scholars, especially with respect to its central claim about the link between persistent status denial and geopolitical competition.

Nationalism and Conflict: Lessons from International Sports

Abstract: Does nationalism make interstate conflict more likely? Many believe so, arguing that it led to such conflicts as the Spanish-American War, the two World Wars, and Russia’s recent intervention in the Ukraine. However, others contend that strategic constraints greatly limit nationalism’s effects on state behavior. Resolving this debate has proven difficult because of endogeneity and measurement issues. I address these problems by analyzing one of the most powerful sources of nationalism in the modern era– international sports. I first investigate several cases where surges of nationalism from sporting events led to military or political conflict between countries. I then analyze a regression discontinuity created by the format of the World Cup qualification process from 1958 to 2010. The results provide strong evidence that World Cup nationalism increases state aggression, especially for countries where association football (soccer) is the most popular sport. I also explore a case from the dataset–Senegal in 2002–to illustrate how World Cup nationalism led to a specific dispute in my sample. Scholars view nationalism as a cause of international conflicts ranging from the Napoleonic Wars to the U.S. invasion of Iraq following September 11 (McCartney 2004, 400; Cederman, Warren, and Sornette 2011, 606). Researchers argue that it can increase enmity between countries (Schrock-Jacobson 2010, 25-8), undermine international cooperation (Walt 2011, 15), motivate societies to fight costly wars (Posen 1993, 81), and cause governments to overestimate their relative military power (Snyder 2000, 67). Moreover, the The data and replication code for this project are available on my GitHub page. I am very grateful to everyone who helped me develop this project, especially Jasjeet Sekhon, Allan Dafoe, Ron Hassner, Aila Matanock, Thad Dunning, Michaela Mattes, David Broockman, Vinod Aggarwal, Robert Trager, Steven Weber, John Henderson, David Broockman, Robert Trager, John Henderson, David Kang, Brian Rathbun, Patrick James, Gerardo Munck, Benjamin Graham, Andrew Coe, Jonathan Markowitz, Brett Carter, Erin Baggott Carter, James Lo, Pablo Barberá, Cali Ellis, Jason Lyall, Kelly Greenhill, Nicholas Sambanis, Hein Goemans, Keir Lieber, Michael Desch, Neil Malhotra, Andrei Markovits, Andrew Eggers, Nathaniel Beck, Cali Ellis, Thomas Zeitzoff, Maya Sen, Rocio Titiunik, Paul Avey, Edward Miguel, Ernesto Dal Bó, Daniel Sargent, Alexander Theodoridis, Evangeline Reynolds, Benjamin Buch, Daniel Altman, Baobao Zhang, Jason Klocek, Benjamin Bartlett, Rochelle Terman, Caroline Brandt, Shinhye Choi, Alice Ciciora, Tara Buss, Bonnie Chan, the members of USC’s Center for International Studies, and the participants of workshops at UC Berkeley and Stanford.

Clubs of Clubs: Fragmentation in the Network of Intergovernmental Organizations

Abstract: Has international cooperation become fragmented in recent decades? We focus on a specific form of potential fragmentation in the international system: the extent to which the network of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) consists of distinct clusters of closely cooperating states. IR scholars—including those with an interest in the causes and consequences of membership in IGOs—pay relatively little attention to the structure of the larger IGO network. At the same time, scholars concerned with fragmentation often assume that it has increased without clear measures of this phenomenon. We use the network analytic technique of modularity maximization to show that throughout the post–World War II period, the structure of the IGO network can generally be divided into distinct groups of states on the basis of their shared IGO memberships. Yet we also show that temporal trends indicate that the IGO network has become less fragmented in recent decades, suggesting that cooperation via these organizations has become more global and less regional. Our findings indicate that, at least as far as cooperation through formal organizations is concerned, fragmentation has decreased in recent decades.

On the Evolution of Primary Institutions of International Society

Abstract: English School theorists argue that primary institutions uphold order in international society. However, they disagree about what those primary institutions are. Moreover, comparatively little rese ...

Military Technology and the Duration of Civil Conflict

Abstract: Why do some civil conflicts end quickly, while others last for years? This paper argues that an incumbent government’s military forces play a crucial role in conflict duration. Specifically, “combined arms” militaries – which bring to bear a mixture of mechanized infantry, armor, and aircraft – make short conflicts more likely. The use of mechanized ground forces in combination with airpower increases the likelihood of decisive engagements early in a conflict, helping to mitigate information asymmetries that can drive violence. By contrast, less-mechanized forces have greater difficulty bringing the fight to the enemy. Combined-arms militaries therefore tend to bring conflicts to more rapid conclusions. However, like maneuver warfare in conventional interstate conflict, these outcomes are not always favorable for the incumbent governments. To test this argument, we employ new, detailed data on military mechanization and airpower from civil conflicts between 1967 and 2003. The results indicate that national militaries with high combined arms capabilities are associated with significantly shorter conflicts. Perhaps surprisingly, this relationship remains robust even when the analysis is limited to insurgencies. For helpful comments on previous drafts, we thank Nikolaos Biziouras, Alexander Downes, Scott Gartner, Benjamin Graham, Mark Paradis, Brian Rathbun, and Brian Urlacher. Thanks to Callum Ingram and Abigail Post for expert research assistance.

A Strategic Logic of Attacking Aid Workers: Evidence from Violence in Afghanistan

Abstract: Why do armed groups ever direct violent attacks against humanitarian aid organizations? While a growing literature has developed on wartime violence against civilians, little research has been done on violence directed against humanitarian aid organizations. And yet violence against aid workers is common in wartime; furthermore, these attacks have particularly devastating consequences for civilians, who suffer when aid organizations are unable or unwilling to provide services as a result of attacks. This paper argues that much of the violence directed against humanitarian aid organizations is not random, but a strategic response aimed at controlling the civilian population. Aid organizations provide essential supplies and services to civilians, reducing the civilian population's dependence on armed groups for their welfare and, therefore, also reducing the ability of armed groups to control civilians. Armed groups thus target aid organizations as a means of pushing aid organizations out of the region in an effort to retain control over the provision of services and to retain authority over civilians themselves. This paper tests this argument in the case of Afghanistan using an original dataset of all reported attacks against aid workers over the last five years of combat operations in Afghanistan. 1 Author ordering is purely alphabetical.